Part of the Pride (17 page)

If my lions get worms, I can walk up to them and give them de-worming medicine. Likewise, to prevent ticks I pour the treatment onto their shoulders individually. If I do find a stray tick, I can just pick it off. De-ticking lions that are not used to people walking up close to them is difficult. The cats have to be driven into a type of crush and then sprayed, which they hate. If one of my lions needs antibiotics, I can give it to him personally, out of my hand, and make sure he has taken it.

Once Napoleon and Tau had a fight, as lions do, and Tau gave Napoleon a really nasty gash in the pad on one of his paws. I called the vet, and when she came to the enclosure she asked if I could show her the wound while Napoleon was still conscious. Because of the relationship I have with Napoleon, I was able to lead him, hobbling, to the gate, pick up his paw, and show it to the doctor while she stood on the other side of the fence.

“It's bad, but I can't stitch it,” the vet said. “It's not like we can put a bandage on it and say, ‘Hey, Napoleon, be sure and stay off the paw for a few days.' He'll chew the bandage off as soon as we put it on him.”

Instead, she asked me if I could dip his paw twice a day in a bucket of water and Hibiscrub, the anti-bacterial soap that surgeons use to wash their hands before operating. After that, I should put cream on the wound and give him an antibiotic pill.

“Sure. No problem,” I said, wondering if she believed me.

Napoleon was in pain, but he let me do exactly as the doctor ordered, and even I thought, “Wow, this is special.” It got to the stage where he would come hobbling down to the gate when he saw me coming. It must have hurt him each time he put his paw in the bucket, but he knew it was doing him good and that I wasn't trying to cause him pain. That's the relationship I have with Napoleon, but I don't know if Tau would have been as patient a patient.

As I've said before, Tau is a different lion. It is not as though I have a better relationship with Napoleon, it's just different. Tau is just a less trusting and more skittish individual than Napoleon. Napoleon is relaxed and chilled and very confident. Just like two human brothers can be different, so too can lion brothers be different, one from the other. And, of course, this can cause problems. Tau and Napoleon needed to be microchipped for identification purposes, and while I can do a lot with those two lions without anesthetic or the need for other people to be around, sticking a big fat needle loaded with a microchip into either of their shoulders would have earned me a bite. In some cases, even with my special lions, there is sometimes no alternative to sedating them so that certain procedures and treatments can be done.

I had to get a vet involved. I arranged for Dr. Paul Bartells to come and do the chipping, and to get some DNA samples from the two lions while he was there. Dr. Bartells is a well-respected veterinary surgeon who has compiled a DNA bank of lions across South Africa for research purposes. The plan was for him to take a small tissue sample from each lion's ear while they were under.

Paul prepared a couple of tranquilizer darts and loaded the dart guns. I don't like putting my lions to sleep, but sometimes it has to be done. He took aim at Napoleon from outside the fence of the enclosure, took a breath, and squeezed the trigger. The dart hit him in the rump and he went down like a sack of potatoes. Paul reloaded and fired at my other lion. While the dart found its mark, Tau
seemed very resilient to the drug. He staggered, walked around a bit, sat down, but then got up again. For some reason the dose just wasn't taking effect.

“I'll give him another shot,” said Paul.

I nodded, my concern growing. He fired another dart and said, “That should do it, but let's go start working on Napoleon or else he's going to wake up soon.”

I agreed, against my better judgment. Tau was woozy, but he still looked too alert for my liking. He was probably pissed off, as well, as he had just had two darts in his butt. However, as luck would have it, Tau was at the far end of the enclosure and Napoleon had dropped right by us, near the gate. We decided to go in—Paul, his female assistant, and me.

No sooner had we slid open the gate, kneeled down by Napoleon, and started to work on him than a couple of onlookers outside the enclosure began shouting.

“Look out!” one cried. “Tau's getting up!”

All three of us turned. Tau had seen us messing with his brother and he was not happy. He charged and we got up and ran for the gate. Tau was about fifty yards from us and we were about five from the gate.

Paul and I bundled his assistant through the gate and she made it to safety. Paul was next at the gate and I was behind him, but Tau was still bounding towards us. Although he had received two doses of tranquilizing drug, Tau covered the distance between us quicker than Paul and I could get through the gate.

Tau reared up and lunged at Paul. Tau had bypassed me, even though I was the closer target, but he locked his jaws around the vet's arm and all I could hear was a crunch, like someone biting into a crisp, juicy apple.

Tau hooked his claws into Paul's buttocks and started trying to drag him down and back into the enclosure. At the same time, the doctor's assistant and the other people outside the enclosure had
hold of Paul and were trying to drag him to safety. Poor Paul was at risk of being pulled apart, and I was terrified that Tau was going to tear Paul's arm off.

I didn't have pepper spray with me on that day, so I did all I could think of to make Tau release the vet. I reached around Tau's huge head and jammed two fingers of one hand into the lion's nostrils. I drove the fingers of my other hand up under Tau's jaw and pressed hard, blocking his airway.

Tau gasped, and that momentary pause, during which he released his bite on Paul's arm, allowed the people outside to drag the bleeding man to safety. I, however, was still in the enclosure with an enraged, drugged lion. He didn't know who I was anymore, or what I was doing to him, or why I was doing it. He started coming after me so I ran back inside the enclosure. I must have looked like a rodeo clown being chased by an enraged bull, though I was running at the same pace as an Olympic sprinter doing the one hundred meters. I ran in a complete circuit of the enclosure with Tau bounding after me.

I was heading towards the exit, but blocking my way was a waterhole which must have been about two meters wide. With Tau gaining on me I decided to try and jump the waterhole, but as I left the bank I tripped and landed face-first in the water.

The funny thing was that as I tripped, Tau also stumbled, in perfect synchronicity with me. I guess the drug was finally starting to take effect on his coordination. If he hadn't fallen when he did, then my beloved, stoned lion probably would have munched and clawed me. The difference between Tau and Tsavo was that my boy had a full set of claws. I splashed through the water, thoroughly soaked, and made it back to the gate in quick time while Tau, finally, passed out behind me.

Paul was airlifted to hospital by a medical evacuation helicopter, and he received somewhere between a hundred and two hundred stitches to repair his mangled arm. It took him more than a year to
recover and to this day he still can't extend his arm fully. He's quite a guy, though, and certainly hasn't let that stop him. He flies microlight aircraft, like me, is the head of the National Zoo's Wildlife Biological Resource Center, and won the National Science and Technology Forum Award. To this day, though, I think he might be secretly proudest of the fact that one day he was mangled by a lion and lived to tell the story.

I saw a saying above a guy's computer one day which read: “Engage brain before putting mouth into gear.” I think that's a good philosophy to follow with humans. I've found that it's an even better philosophy to follow when I look at a lion and think about how he's being treated. Before I make an assumption about a lion or take a step towards him, I try to take all the facts I know into account. For instance, I have seen lions in captivity that appeared to me to be unhappy. However, I don't really know what's in that lion's head, as he lives behind the bars of his cage and I don't know the relationship that lion has to its keeper. By the same token, most people don't really understand the relationship I have with my lions and that creates disagreements among us. Both that keeper and I have different relationships with our lions. Maybe I can explain how I think about a lion, and in doing so give you an idea of how I approach and manage all the big cats I work with.

First off, I don't have the same relationship with all of my lions that I do with Napoleon, and I constantly try to keep in mind that all animals are individuals. Tau and Napoleon, for instance, are brothers, but like all brothers they fight sometimes, and that affects the way that they interact with me. Like people, we must understand that even animals related through birth can have very different personalities, and we must also remember that they go through different stages in their lives. Just like us, they can have good days and bad days. Many factors can affect the relationship, such as the
way I happened to be getting on with one or more of the pride males at the time, or the way that a mom with a new litter of cubs eyes me.

Second, the amount of time that I know a lion can also affect my relationship with it. For instance, there is a group of lions that I call “acquaintance lions,” lions that I don't know as well as my own lions. I will work with them, but I am more careful. Things can change with time, though. An acquaintance lion can become a good friend. Problems that might have existed between us might just have been related to age, for instance.

That brings up a third point: the age of the lion. As Tsavo and others have taught me, relationships with lions can become a bit sticky between the ages of two and three. Lions that I don't see eye to eye with at this age can become great friends of mine at five. By the same token, some animals I've been friendly with at that earlier age don't get on with me as they get older. When lions hit the equivalent of puberty, they change, and that can manifest itself in their behavior with lions younger and older than them. Just like I ran wild when I was a young man, so can they, and I keep that in mind when I'm with them. From a management point of view, it's about understanding these changes, and being aware of what else is going on around the animals. For instance, if I move some sexy young lady lions in next door to Thor, he might not want to know me for a while. It's not rocket science. When I was an adolescent, if a sexy young girl had moved in next door to me, I pretty much would have wanted my mom, say, to keep her distance, if I ever got the chance to talk to the new neighbor. Some keepers, though, wouldn't consider their own human experiences to understand a change in a lion's behavior. And that, I think, is a big mistake.

It must be terrible, I think, for lions introduced into a zoo to hear the strange calls of all the other animals around them and not be able to see or interact with others of their species. Think of how you might feel, dropped down in the middle of a country where you didn't speak the language and were all alone. You'd be just like
those lions. They're the ones you see pacing up and down in their cages. They're “wild” animals that are being kept in captivity. By wild, I mean they are unable to interact with humans, and only see them as something either to fear or to hate. They don't know whether to be aggressive or submissive towards their keepers. My lions aren't wild. They know me, they know their surroundings, and it makes life easier for all of us.

Part of the problem with a troubled captive lion is that it may have been hand-raised as a cub and exposed to humans when it was little and cute. I believe that cubs that get this sort of attention are enriched and contented animals. They play until they get tired and then they fall asleep. In the wild, they get similar attention from the rest of the pride and are allowed to exhaust themselves with play. In captivity, there usually comes a point when the cub is withdrawn from public contact, because it has reached a certain size, and never interacts with a human again on friendly terms for the rest of its life. It's no wonder they seem troubled. I wish it was different. I wish that those people who cared for the cubs would keep up the relationship, even in a different form, when those cubs grew. Staff in zoos and other Lion Parks come and go, but just as I try to understand my lions as individuals, so have I made a commitment to them that they will be looked after, even if I am not around.

Starting at birth, there are two ways to manage captive lion cubs—they can either be left with their mothers or taken away and hand-raised.

Leaving a lioness to raise her cubs, in the presence of the pride males, means visitors can see a whole pride together, which is a nice experience. It also saves money, because hand-raising a cub costs about R6000 ($800) per animal. You can tell the difference when a cub is fed on mother's milk—it grows faster, it's more solid, and its fur is in great condition.

Traditionally, though, the problem with leaving a lioness to raise her cubs is that the young ones grow up “wild”—that is, not exposed to humans from a young age. This is because conventional wisdom had it that a human could never go anywhere near a lioness and her cubs. Lionesses were so fiercely protective that they would kill anyone who tried to spend time with their cubs. In the wild, young males are forced to leave the pride once they reach an age of between eighteen and twenty-six months. If they stayed, they would be killed by the dominant pride male. The same thing happens in captivity, but the downside is that if the males have been raised “wild” then humans can never work with them.

Removing cubs at birth means that they could be raised around humans, meaning they might be available for, say, film work later in life. However, a lioness who loses her cubs goes straight back into estrus, so taking them away may mean more cubs to deal with—at more cost—a little more than three months later. Space becomes a factor, as well, because creating more and more lion enclosures is a costly business.